In “Exterminating Christians in the Middle East” (Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2015), Robert Reilly highlights the parallels between Nazi Germany and the similar story “playing out again, as Christians are being wiped out in the Middle East”. He references Pope Francis’s recent remarks: “Today we are dismayed to see how in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world many of our brothers and sisters are persecuted, tortured and killed for their faith in Jesus.” He continued: “In this third world war, waged piecemeal, which we are now experiencing, a form of genocide is taking place.”

Notably, Mr. Reilly, the Director of the Westminster Institute in McLean Virginia references how “Middle Eastern Christians are being exterminated by Islamic State, or ISIS, simply because they are Christians. As Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David, Christian homes are marked with the Arabic letter “N” for Nazarene”.

Father Philemon Patitsas, Presiding Priest of the St. Katherine Greek Orthodox Church (Naples, FL) advises that “there is absolutely no excuse for our silence and inaction in the face of this horrific slaughter and holocaust being waged against the Christians of the Middle East”. “We owe a debt of gratitude to Robert Reilly for his excellent Wall Street Journal article “Exterminating Christians in the Middle East“, calling attention to this human catastrophe.

“As the Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned about our moral apathy and hard heartedness toward tyranny, and his words still apply: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil,” he said. “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” Therefore we need to be advocating for changes in our immigration and refugee adoption policies that will allow us to receive those Christian peoples suffering persecution and destruction, since they have no where else to turn for rescue. We also need to petition Congress to intervene against these moral injustices”.

Dr. Harry Dimopoulos, Co-Chairman of the Christian Rights and Freedom Institute highlights: “With respect to the terrible Christian persecution I can only say that the horror of this genocide is as unfathomable as that of the Jewish Holocaust or the Christian genocide in Anatolia some 100 years ago. And yet the world public seems more outraged by the unfortunate murder of a lion in Zimbabwe. Our sense of balance needs to be calibrated here”.

To read ‘Exterminating Christians in the Middle East’, on the Wall Street Journal web site,Click Here.

Nick Mavrick served on the OCN Board of Directors. The OCN Board consists of volunteers, who are also donors, and are passionate about giving back to the Orthodox Church. We welcome other volunteers to join us.

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